


Each Hour Betwixt Us

by Neffectual



Series: 104 Reasons to Stay Alive [26]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coming Out, DEAL WITH IT, England (Country), English School System, F/M, Female Hange Zoë, Gender-Neutral Hange Zoë, Growing Up, Growing Up Together, Homophobia, M/M, Trans Moblit, ish, orisor inspired, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 11:09:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2619587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neffectual/pseuds/Neffectual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erwin and Mike have been best friends since they were five years old, and nothing is going to change that. However, they find that adolescence isn't quite as easy as they think it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Each Hour Betwixt Us

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be about 1500 words for a friend. Instead, it's 5000 words of self-help, therapy, self-expression, and writing it has taken such a weight off my shoulders. Thanks, man.

_If I were to be bound, t’would be to you,_   
_If I were to need, t’would be for you_   
_Each hour betwixt us is raw and dark,_   
_My heart would be yours, if I had a heart._

The flirtation starts as schoolboy pranks, sitting next to each other in lessons and passing notes, throwing balled up paper at the other children, kicking each other’s seats in what will later strike them as classic pigtail-pulling behaviour, demanding each other’s attention when Latin and French cannot keep them enthralled. Teachers joke that they are twins split at birth, both tall for their age and blond, bright eyed and keenly intelligent, inseparable from the moment Mike slides into the seat next to Erwin, leans over and sniffs him like a dog, and then sits back, apparently satisfied with whatever it is he scented.

“What do I smell like?” Erwin asks, voice bright with interest.

“You.” Mike says, with a grin, before shaking his mop of fair hair, “It’s nice.”

  
Mike never stops greeting Erwin with a nuzzle to the neck, scenting him, as school carries on through, and their exam options split them apart for classes, Mike dropping history in favour of languages, and Erwin refusing science in favour of art. Lunch finds them with a few other oddball characters; Hanji Zoe, whose passion for science is only outweighed by her fascination with psychology, and Levi Ackerman, who writes complex equations as if they were nothing, and swears in eighteen different languages. Fourteen and full of piss and vinegar, they have a poor reputation outside of class, though all are outstanding students, the staff agree. If only Erwin would quit smoking, if only Mike would get rid of his laughable attempt at facial hair, if only Hanji would stop blowing up the chemistry labs, and Levi would stop teaching the lower school how to curse in German. If only they would make some better, more normal friends.

  
It comes as no surprise to anyone when, at an unscheduled party at Levi’s, everyone bar Erwin drinking awful Bacardi Breezers (because he insists everyone is allowed one vice, and smoking is filling up all his available space for the time being), Mike pulls Erwin into his lap and kisses him soundly, and Erwin does nothing but shiver a little when he is released, curling in to tuck his face in Mike’s neck as Hanji and Levi howl with laughter. Mike’s hand in his hair feels huge and warm, and Erwin wonders when his friend grew taller than him, as Mike wonders when his friend’s scent went from nice to delicious, and how he’s resisted doing this for the past two years.

From then on, they are an unofficial couple, spending their revision sessions with tentative hands creeping under clothes, until they grow in confidence and begin to undress, so certain that they will not be caught. Mike’s sixteenth birthday passes in March, with sloppy blowjobs and kissing the come out of each other’s’ mouths, but Erwin’s birthday in October is a ceremony, candles and terrible music, the first fumbling flushes of adolescence glimpsed as skin is revealed, and Erwin begs for more from under Mike’s powerful body, his single bed creaking in protest against the weight of two almost-men as the headboard knocks against the wall in a tell-tale rhythm. It is exactly what a first time should be, Erwin thinks – clumsy and comical, over too quickly and half-disappointing, but they’re teenage boys, and by the time they reach round four, they’re getting better at it.

 

  
They laugh about how they’ll grow up and take other, better lovers, but on the night when Erwin’s father orders him out of the house on pain of violence, objecting against his ‘homosexual gallivanting’; a phrase so objectionable that Erwin’s handsome face twists into something ugly as he says it, it is Mike’s house he goes to. Coming in from the winter chill, his bed is big and warm, and for once Erwin feels safe, dwarfed by Mike’s size, held securely until he stops shaking with rage and fear, his icy cheek on Mike’s broad, warm shoulder. There are no words necessary, nothing which needs to be said, words swallowed and unimportant in comparison to what the sense of touch can give them; Erwin feeling small and stupid for thinking his family would understand, that they loved him more than they honoured prejudice, and wonders what he can do with his life now. He skips two weeks of school and stays under Mike’s duvet, only emerging to eat soup and French bread as Mike’s mother tuts at his shrinking frame, and tries to make him eat second helpings.

  
“They’ll regret this,” she says, softly, and ruffles his hair, and all Erwin can think is that his father has never regretted anything in his life, and isn’t about to start now. He is sixteen and his entire world has crumbled out from underneath him. He resents everything and everyone – Mike for having understanding parents, Hanji for having the financial freedom to live alone, Levi for not giving a shit what anyone thinks about him. He rails against the world, until he realises that Mike has spent the past three days sleeping in the guest room, because he has become as intolerable in his hatred of the world as his father is in his hatred of Erwin.

He goes home, telling no one, and is relieved when his mother greets him with arms wide and tears shed, but halts when she speaks.

“Why did you have to say anything?” she says, and his blood turns to ice, “It would have been fine if you hadn’t insisted on flaunting it to us. After all, we don’t talk to you about our sex life.”

He steps carefully out of her embrace, and turns to the door, only to see his father framed against the dying light of the day. For a moment, he feels strong, knowing that all is already lost, and there is nothing more they can do to him.  
“You want to know about my sex life? You want to hear about how I’d skive off school so my boyfriend could blow me in the copse on the field? Or how whenever I was ‘revising with a friend’, I was on my back and begging for him, legs spread like a whore?”  
The hand raised against him doesn’t hit, Mike’s huge hand blocking it, standing in front of him, and Erwin’s unreasonably angry to be saved, before realising that he was just going to stand there and take the blow. No words pass between the four of them, a frozen tableau, before Levi drawls from the doorway:  
“Pack a bag, Erwin. Then get in the car.”

  
He packs on autopilot, Mike’s hands fluttering near but never touching, helping him take pictures, clothes, books, and carrying them down to the car as his parents stand in silence, staring. He has nothing more to say to them, knows that speaking out is going to make it worse, and so allows himself be guided into the car, driven to Mike’s house, and led up to the bedroom he’s slept in for two weeks. It is only then that Mike speaks.

“You said boyfriend.” He says, softly, almost too quiet to hear, so Erwin can pretend he never said it, if he so wishes.

“Did I?” Erwin asks, bitterly, without looking up from where he’s sat on the bed, staring at his feet, “I didn’t realise.”

Mike sits next to him and folds his oldest friend and only lover into his arms, curling his fingers gently in the hair at the nape of Erwin’s neck, just as he likes it.

“You can take it back, you know.” He murmurs, as if it won’t hurt him, as if it wouldn’t be a wrench to hear those words, because right now, Erwin needs someone who won’t tell him what to do and who to be, and he’s damned if he’ll fail at that, “It’s okay.”

Erwin bites his lip, silence heavier than words, before he lifts his head and kisses Mike’s jaw, an awkward angle and a strain, but worth it, because the soft flutter of lips is apology and promise all in one.

“I should have said it two years ago.” Erwin says, quietly, and Mike holds him a little closer, and pretends he doesn’t see the tears.

 

  
College is different to school; no uniform, for a start, and Mike would be lying if he said he didn’t miss the royal blue jumper and the way it reflected in Erwin’s eyes. In college everyone is suddenly cool, a transformation which took place between July and September, and leaves Mike in the dust, only the designer stubble and moustache he’s been cultivating to mark him as anything more than an overgrown child. Levi is awash with piercings and band t-shirts, and his new friends sneer at Mike as he walks through the corridors, Hanji has her place with the nerds, who are no longer castigated, but respected and treated like heroes in their own field. And Erwin, glorious Erwin, is the golden boy, and even the girls who came from their school, who know he has always been Mike’s, want to try a piece. Cultural history and classical civilisations is full of bright eyed students who are eager to learn, and Mike feels out of place, lost, wishing Erwin was in the seat beside him, with Levi behind them, dozing through the lesson. Instead, Erwin has fingers covered in paint chips, camera bag hanging from his shoulder, and all the girls begging for pictures make Mike bite his lip, eating his lunch alone in the common room, unwilling to push through the throngs to get to anyone.

Levi is skipping lunch, as usual, outside talking drugs and nightclubs, comparing lovebites and fuckbuddies, Hanji is in a lab, working extra time to ensure her project is perfect, with her friends around her, and Erwin is busy with a fawning audience of lapdog princesses. In the corridors, he nods at Mike as he walks past, nothing more, and they take different buses home, student council meetings keeping Erwin late. At home – Mike’s home, although he feels like a stranger in his own childhood bedroom – he crawls into bed at ten, homework done, and the lamp still burning bright on Erwin’s desk as he works late into the night, and slides into bed with him a few scant hours before he will have to get up again. On some nights, Mike falls asleep in an empty bed and wakes in one too, only the warmth still soaked into the mattress fulfilling his suspicion that he did not sleep alone, too. They are lovers of necessity now, mechanical fumbling whenever Erwin ruts against him and demands it, and Mike finds he has less and less appetite for the act himself, choosing instead to roll over and think about his homework until his erection goes away.

The car is a seventeenth birthday present for Mike, and he can feel the envy pouring off Erwin before he even has the chance to start his lessons, before he sets foot in it, Erwin’s parents having moved to another town and left a bag of stuff at their door, without a note. On one hand, Mike gets it, understands that it is miserable feeling that he has no place, no home, and that everyone else gets better treatment than him, but at the same time, these are Mike’s parents, it’s Mike’s home, and he’s been sharing it for a year with a boy who is no longer the friend and lover he used to be.

“You could act a little less like you hate me.” He says, passing Erwin in the corridor and ignoring the cool but friendly nod, “We do share a bed.”

Erwin’s look promises retribution later, and Mike looks down to see his hand tangled with that of someone else, a boy he doesn’t know, and he wonders how long this has been going on, how much he has missed, and when Erwin stopped being his. He skips his last two lessons and heads home early, wallowing to sad music until Erwin gets home, and shuts their shared bedroom door behind him in a way which echoes with finality.

“Who is he?” Mike says, before Erwin can get a word out – he’s on the debate team, he’s not letting him get a head start, “Who have you been with? Did you bring him here, to our bed?”

Erwin looks startled, as if the thought had never occurred to him, but then his face smoothes into the mask Mike is so used to looking at these days.

“For your information, Nile and I have only just started going out.”

Mike doesn’t need to hear any more of this, and starts packing up the few things in the room he can truly call his, before taking his school bag and heading to the guest room, flowery and unused, where he locks the door, and ignores Erwin calling his name from the other side.

 

  
They get through their exams somehow, Erwin’s grades falling behind as Mike excels, his parents pleased even as he brings home a string of older boyfriends. New Year’s Eve finds him on his back on a bed, a stranger’s cock down his throat as the countdown goes on outside, and as he relaxes his throat for the guy to fuck his mouth, he closes his eyes and wonders what Erwin is doing, whether he’s celebrating with Nile or alone, and he continues wondering even as the guy comes down his throat, pulls away, dresses and leaves. He doesn’t even offer Mike a hand, and Mike wouldn’t have taken him up on it if he had. Mike realises, quietly, in that back bedroom at the party of someone whose name he can’t remember, that he’s unhappy like this, three months from his eighteenth birthday and sharing his house with someone who was once both lover and friend, and is now neither of those things.

The walk back to his house at 2am is cold and lonely, and when he gets in, he considers knocking on the door of his childhood bedroom, now Erwin’s room. He hears laughter coming from beyond it, and the creak of a bed, and turns away, heading for his own room and the solitude that sleep will bring; clearly Erwin is not concerned about what they may have lost. Mike makes a solemn promise to himself in that moment, that he will stop sleeping around, that he will stop treating himself as if he is worthless, just because Erwin seems to think so, and that next time he chooses a lover, it will be a grand romance, just like he always hoped for.

 

School gets harder for their final year, and if Erwin notices the dark circles under Mike’s eyes as he struggles to keep up with the workload, he says nothing, all conversation between them being banal and insubstantial. Mike’s parents don’t seem to know how to react to this stranger under their roof, and simply keep themselves out of the business of the two boys who are circling, like juvenile lions, but each unwilling to be the one to strike first, for fear of injury. Mike drives to school, and does not offer Erwin a lift, Levi sitting in the passenger seat, feet up on the dashboard and critiquing Mike’s music with the air of a seasoned professional, but then, that’s how he’s always done things.

“Are you and Erwin done, then?” he asks one day, tone bored, and adds “Is that all over now?”

“Seems so.” Mike replies, and keeps his eyes on the road, knuckles white on the steering wheel.

“Mind if I take a crack at him?” Levi says, and Mike nearly hits the car in front in shock, before calming himself enough to keep driving, “Always fancied one of you big blond things.”

Mike laughs, and knows enough to hear that it’s bitter, vicious, and full of hurt, as he pulls into a space in the school car park and stops the car.

“What’s wrong with me?” he asks, before he can stop himself, and Levi raises an eyebrow, surprised, despite himself.

“Never figured you for wanting a little thing like me.” He says, and Mike is gratified by the response, leaning in to kiss the smaller boy, which Levi surges up into with astounding speed. Hanji knocks on the window, making them both jump, and grins her familiar mad grin, and for a second, it’s just like it was before, until Levi reaches up to scrub at the plum lipstick he’s left on Mike.

“I think I’ll try Erwin.” He says, without giving a reason, and he and Hanji leave, arm in arm. Mike is left standing in the car park, traces of purple on his lips and an aching in his heart which he doesn’t seem to know how to stop.

  
A Levels are exhausting, and when they’re finally over, Mike’s parents throw a party for their two boys, and Mike pretends he doesn’t see when Levi and Erwin sneak away upstairs, coming back down half an hour later, rumpled and smiling. They pass on the stairs as Mike takes Hanji to bed, finding that the quickest way to make her shut up about pheromones is his mouth on her clit, his hands spreading her thighs apart, and that inside, she is hot and wet for him, urging him not to use a condom because she’s on the pill, and she wants to feel him. He comes inside her, then brings her to another orgasm, licking himself out of her, until she’s a giggling mess, and grins up at him, all bright eyes and pleasure, and he feels like the worst kind of person when he realises that, really, she did very little for him. She brushes his hand before she heads downstairs, like she knows, and it is not something that they ever do again.

 

University does both of them a world of good, Erwin and Levi not lasting beyond the first three weeks, because Levi does who he pleases, and Erwin is never going to be one of those people who can stand to share – be shared, maybe, but not to share what he thinks is his. Hanji is off to Cambridge, with Levi at Bristol, and Mike in Scotland, at St. Andrews, so Erwin feels a little isolated at Exeter, his photography course full of people who have never held a camera before, and people who have professional portfolios, with him nestled somewhere in between. It’s not that it’s demanding, even with a psychology minor, added on the request that he have ‘something to fall back on’, but it’s the first time that he’s truly been aware that he is a small fish in a very big pond, and that once he is out in the world, he will feel even more out of his depth.

His lecturers are good, at the very least, and he throws himself into the work with a passion he has not felt for a long time, joining a number of societies and clubs as well, and attending almost none of them, which he is told is perfectly normal for freshers, but dance classes are early on a Saturday before the gym opens, and usually pretty empty, which gives him time to think before the thud of the treadmills takes over the noise of the air conditioning. The people, both on his course and who he meets through other activities, are interesting, and it takes him a little while to realise that they think the same thing of him, which is flattering and not a little bit intimidating.

It takes two months before Erwin rings Mike, intent on discussing some obscure reference he heard in class, which contains a quotation Mike is bound to love, and before he knows it, they have spent two hours in conversation. From then on, they talk every week, whether it is about Erwin’s disastrous attempts at photographing leaves – they won’t sit still, and he pouts about it for days – or Mike’s heavy reading list – he hates Robinson Crusoe with a passion, and would dearly love to dig up Defoe and piss all over his colonialism-worshipping corpse, apparently – and they are always regretful to have to hang up. It seems that in growing up outside of each other’s sphere of influence is making them both into better people, and when Erwin makes Mike laugh, he can feel that old, familiar shiver down his spine, the one which warms him to his very core, and makes him wish that Scotland wasn’t so far away.

  
When they break up from school for Christmas, Erwin comes home to Mike setting up in their old room, the double bed remade and his desk moved back in, without a single word. Erwin would say something, but the peace is still tenuous – and besides, he has been sleeping alone in a room for the past three months, and he hates the silence – so he just heads down to dinner with a grin and a pat to Mike’s shoulder.

That night, he again says nothing when Mike slides, naked, into bed with him, and he can see how those hours at the gym have been paying off, feel Mike’s body heat so close to him, but not touching. They fall asleep uneasily, distance between them, but Erwin wakes to Mike’s body draped over him, and simply curls back into the pillow and dozes off again, letting the familiar heartbeat soothe him. When he wakes up for the second time, Mike is embarrassed, but Erwin shrugs it off easily – this is hardly the first time they have been naked in a bed together – and kisses his cheek softly, before making the first run to the bathroom, laughing as that leaves Mike cursing in his wake.

He finds himself thinking he should have locked the door when Mike appears under the spray, kneels before him and takes him into his mouth. His moustache tickles at Erwin’s thigh, and his hair is longer, easier to tangle his fingers in, to pull at, and Erwin finds himself not thinking about anyone else Mike has done this with, but the first time they did, and all the times in between, and is coming before he has time to warn Mike, who pulls away spluttering, and nips Erwin’s thigh in reprimand even as he grips himself and spills over the floor of the shower.

 

They refuse to transfer universities, saying that the time apart will only help them to balance a work-life relationship, and to learn whether or not they’re actually suitable, so second year is harder, longer and with more work time spent in libraries or labs, Erwin taking work experience wherever he can get it, travelling to weddings on the weekends, and Mike is trying to get a first so that he can go straight into his PGCE and start teaching as soon as possible, so both are swamped with work. And yet, they still find time to call each other once a week and talk about their time apart, still see each other during reading week and the holidays, when Mike falls on Erwin like a starving man, quick to get him naked and spread out on the bed, arse up, so Mike can lap at him until he’s almost sobbing with it. But more important than the sex, which is fantastic, their time spent back in their room at home is comfortable, and feels right, safe, close, like they should have been doing this long ago, as Erwin cheats at Mario Kart and Mike throws the controller at him, swearing, until they both fall back on the bed, laughing.

Their days are full of walks, gaming, homework side by side, their nights with slow, quiet lovemaking in the dark, knowing each other so well by feel at this point that vision seems unnecessary. When they are back in classes, they have those memories, those touches to sustain them until the next time, and no matter how hard their courses become, the fact that they have something outside of uni to think about always keeps them going strong.

Their third years are a mess of paperwork, dissertations, extra work, deadlines, extensions and not enough time to get home. At the worst point, they don’t see each other for six weeks, as Mike has a nervous breakdown over his dissertation on Wordsworth’s ‘The Prelude’ and seriously considers setting fire to every daffodil he ever sees again, and Erwin loses an entire memory card containing around 80% of his final project, starting from scratch with two weeks to go, furious with himself for not being careful enough with his work. The Easter holidays are three weeks off, but also just before most of their deadlines, so they make the difficult decision not to head home and see each other, but to stay near the libraries and studios they need in order to finish up their work to the standard they need. It’s a huge wrench, and Mike considers calling Erwin more times than he can count, but every time he gets the urge, he looks back to his texts and thinks more about the poetry which came out of the French Revolution, rather than how Erwin feels beneath him, so strong but so willing to let go of control.

They both graduate with firsts, of course, because they have always been clever, and their time apart only made them that much more diligent and willing to work hard to achieve their goals. Levi calls them both bastards until he’s forced to reveal that he got the highest marks in his whole year, and a special prize, so they can tease him mercilessly for being a swot. Hanji shows up to see them when they get home, and informs them that she became the first person ever to get full marks on a paper, and that Cambridge don’t know whether to congratulate her or simply assume she was cheating, which has always been the way. It feels right, all of them back together, although they know they will go their separate ways soon for jobs – Hanji already has one in Manchester, and Levi is staying in Bristol for his master’s degree, while Mike’s PGCE will be in London. Erwin doesn’t yet know where he will go – but he knows that no matter what, he’ll still have his friends, and that’s worth all of the surety and cushy jobs in the world. Mike laughs at him and says he’ll change his mind once he has to start paying rent, but Erwin is certain that friends will be the key to his life, not money or success.

 

  
Sometime around the point where Mike turns 23, they all end up in London, sharing a grotty little flat which they do their best to make feel like home. Hanji prefers gender neutral pronouns now, and Levi kicks Erwin any time he forgets, and has an adorable transgender boyfriend who practically lives at their place. Moblit has grown on all of them enough to accept when he and Hanji are flopped on the sofa, watching terrible Netflix serial killer documentaries and correcting the details, as both of them are working as criminal profilers with the Met. Considering how quiet he is, sometimes Erwin thinks he prefers Moblit to Hanji. Levi has lost half the piercings, although extensively tattooed now, and settled into his PhD at UCL, with a tiny undergraduate boyfriend called Eren, who everyone agrees is too loud for Levi to fuck when anyone else is home. Other than his habit of screaming Levi’s name as if he’s summoning Satan, Eren is okay, if a bit young to be with Levi, as far as Mike is concerned.

As for the two of them, they settle into a comfortable routine of long days, Erwin at fashion houses and Mike teaching at an inner-city school, bad cartoons from their childhood, and spaghetti carbonara, because it’s one of the few things Mike trusts Erwin to make without expecting to come home and find the flat ablaze. They have a cat, Vixen, so called because of the way she likes to show her belly and then violently maul whoever touches it, who has managed not to eat any of Hanji’s rats, which zee keeps, surprisingly, for the company, and not for doing experiments on. It isn’t an easy life, or one which provides them with much stability, the flat always too full and the rent always too expensive, but it’s one which fits them, like an old coat on the first few days of winter, and if Mike sleeps with his legs tangled in Erwin’s, it is to hold him closer, as if they could both fit inside one skin.

The simple truth is that they are not whole without each other – not just the two of them, but all of them, that they need each other to keep from going off the deep end. The years apart have taught them that, whilst not healthy, their relationships are all stronger when they have each other to rely on and bitch with, and that the people they met at uni just weren’t cutting it. When he’s halfway through a bottle of wine, Mike likes to put his arm around Erwin and say that they were meant to be together, fated, and everyone will laugh as Erwin buries his face in his hands and shakes his head. They’re no grand romance, no story of passion for the ages, but they work, and they spend a lot of time making sure that is the case. Mike slides his hand into Erwin’s, and nuzzles his lover’s neck as Erwin squeezes back. No, it isn’t easy, and it isn’t perfect – but it is worthwhile.


End file.
